England's traumatic Ashes history makes domination hard to believe

Joe Root, 178 not out, left England in a fantastic position at the end of play on day three of the second Ashes Test. Photograph: Andrew Boyers/Action Images

A dozen years ago, after Steve Waugh had chalked up six successive Ashes-winning series and with the seventh and eighth still on the horizon of his stellar career, the Australia captain began talking about victory in India as "the final frontier" for his side and said he could envisage a future where Australia v India dethroned the Ashes as the supreme contest for his countrymen.

How things have changed. Where once Ashes series for Australia occasioned their cold-eyed and wolfish demolition of houses incompetently constructed from straw or sticks, now those who revelled in their steam-rolling sadism have been forced to become masochists to derive any pleasure from their bungling and desertion by good fortune.

With two days left of the second Test, Australia's victory target already exceeds the highest achieved at Lord's – West Indies' 344 in 1984 – their own best fourth innings' winning total, the 404 for three at Headingley in 1948 driven by Arthur Morris's 182 and Don Bradman's unbeaten 173 and the greatest chase in Test history, West Indies' 418 against Waugh's team in 2003. It seems certain, then, given the flakiness of the tourists' top order that England will go 2-0 up some time on Sunday or Monday, the first time they have managed to establish such a lead after two matches of a five-Test series against Australia at home .

In 1936-37, MCC, under the captaincy of Gubby Allen, won the first and second Tests at the Gabba and the SCG on the post-Bodyline bridge-building visit before Bradman's Australia fought back skillfully and ruthlessly against an exhausted and poorly selected squad to win 3-2. It was the last time England enjoyed such a dominant lead so early in an Ashes series, but given that the generally unpleasant Allen felt he was in charge of "a rotten side", the breezy start was more of a surprise than the eventual defeat.

For any England supporter who lived through the barren years from 1989 to 2005 and endured the 2006-07 postscript, the moment the vampire pulled the stake from its heart and went on its most malevolent rampage, this state of affairs seems, as Philip Larkin wrote in an entirely different context, paradise everyone old has dreamed of all their lives. Memories of Australia's 528 at Lord's in 1989, Michael Atherton being run out for 99 and England's defeat by an innings there in 1993, even though Allan Border's team had one fit fast bowler after Craig McDermott twisted his bowel, and Glenn McGrath's eight for 38 in 1997 still appear so fresh that the current home ascendancy is difficult to believe despite the evidence of Saturday's humiliating day for the tourists.

We are living in extraordinary timesin Ashes cricket. In 2005 and 2009 England edged a remarkably tight series but in 2010-11 and again now England have tormented Australia in the manner of their own evisceration in six successive series. The past may have traumatised us too much to ever write Australia off, but if England do go 2-0 up with three to play there is no Bradman, Chuck Fleetwood-Smith and Bill O'Reilly to turn the tables so dramatically this time.